Vincent Cassel Talks Mesrine: Killer Instinct

3 months ago 29th Jul 10:58

Vincent Cassel is a French actor who has found success in both French cinema as well as on the international stage.

After appearing in the likes Ocean's Thirteen and Eastern Promises he returns to French cinema for Mesrine: Killer Instinct.

Please tell us who is Jacques Mesrine?

Jacques Mesrine is a very famous gangster in France who died in 1979, shot down by the police in the middle of the street. His body was displayed on TV as a statement from the government. He was one of the first gangsters to use the media for his own sake.

In that sense he became like a rock star in France.  In 1979, the year he died, he was the favourite celebrity of the French people.  I think he really tried to find a lot of excuses for his actions, but I think he really wanted to be a gangster since his childhood.

He was a very complex and nasty character, why was it appealing for you to play Jacques Mesrine?

Well the fact that it wasn’t that clear, that he was ambiguous, full of paradoxes and antagonism. I never wanted to judge the character ever but we wanted to do it with Jean-Francois Richet and Gerard Depardieu in a way which showed all the different aspects of his character, letting the audience judge him if they wanted to. 

He is a bad guy, but not as bad as we read in the media. He left behind him this image of being a Robin Hood-style figure, but he wasn’t because he never gave anything back to the poor. He was a showman. He really controlled the media for his own sake, creating a persona, the only positive thing about this is that he had the courage to live up to the persona he created.

Could you identify why he was so popular with the masses, with the French people?

Well first of all, not all French people like Mesrine, some people are really scared of him and they are freaked out just by the sound of his voice, but in the poor section of French society, he was the one figure that made fun of the government, threatening them.

He had the courage to do all this and he was ready to pay the price for it. I think that’s why the projects in the suburbs are still so much in love with the image of Jacques Mesrine today.

It’s obviously a very French story so for the international market it has been described as a French Scarface or Goodfellas for example do you agree that there are similarities with those films?

Well all three films are telling the story of gangsters, Mesrine really existed, all the facts in the movie are not created by some writer, they really happened. I think even though you may not have heard about the character just to know that it was real gives you another perspective on the movies.

And mentioning Robert De Niro, another similarity is that in order to portray Mesrine you had to put on 20 Kilos, you had to change your physical appearance. How did that change you as a person?

Well I think that it is always a dream for an actor to go through a drastic transformation like that, the only problem is that you have to find the right movie to do that in otherwise it’s ridiculous.